The word romance is associated with the very study of Rome itself, and one of the most romantic parts of the city is the area to the South , where there are plenty of reminders of the glory of ancient Rome. This area encompasses the start of the Via Appia , the most famous of Rome’s consular roads, which struck from the southeast end of the Circo Massimo straight as an arrow to the port of Brindisi 365 miles south. The road was built by the censor Appio Claudio in 312 BC, and is the only Roman landmark mentioned in the Bible. Immediately beyond the Palatine Hill, the Baths of Caracalla is the first major sight along the route, one of the city’s grandest ruins, and the venue until recently of inspirational performances of opera. Beyond, most visitors take public transport out to see the ancient catacombs , which line either side of the Via Appia Antica on its way through the outlying districts of the modern city. A little way west, Via Ostiense was another important traffic artery, linking – as it in fact still does – Rome to its port of Ostia. It’s home to a more recent, nineteenth-century attraction in the Protestant Cemetery , where the poets Keats and Shelley are buried, and the magnificent rebuilt basilica of St Paolo-fuori-le-Mura .
Entries with South Of tag
South Of The River
The middle of the Ponte di Mezzo , the city’s central bridge, is a perfect spot from which to admire the sweep of Pisa’s palazzo-lined waterfront and the Logge di Banchi on the south side of the bridge. Formerly the city’s silk and wool market, this is now the scene for student gatherings and assignations after dark; it stands at the head of the main Corso Italia , a street that gets progressively shabbier as it nears the train station. On the church of San Antonio, just off Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, is the last work of US artist Keith Haring . Haring completed the vibrant, imaginative mural in a week in June 1989 while seriously ill; he died eight months later. His bendy, cartoonish figures alter colour above what is now the bus station, tragically unregarded, and indeed, quite often obscured by parked buses. A five-minute achievement west of the Ponte di Mezzo is the turreted oratory of Santa Maria della Spina . The little church dates from 1230, but was rebuilt in 1323 in the finest flourish of Pisan Gothic by a merchant who had acquired a thorn ( spina ) of Christ’s crown. The tiny single-naved interior (same hours as Torre Guelfa, above; L2000/¬1.03; joint ticket with Torre Guelfa L4000/¬2.06) has mullioned windows on the river side, but has lost most of its furnishings.
South Of Piazza Del Duomo
The area south of Piazza del Duomo is relatively thin on tourist attractions, with few real targets and unalluring streets. However, the charming church of San Satiro (daily 8-11am & 3.30-6.30pm), off the busy shopping street of Via Torino, is a study in ingenuity, commissioned from Milan’s foremost Renaissance architect, Bramante, in 1476. Originally the oratory of the adjacent ninth-century church of San Satiro, it was transformed by Bramante into a long-naved basilica by converting the long oblong oratory into the transept and adding a wonderful trompe l’oeil apse onto the back wall. Five minutes away, just off Via Torino at Piazza Pio 2, the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (Tues-Sun 10am-5.30pm; L12,000/¬6.20) was founded by another member of the Borromeo family, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, in the primeval seventeenth century. The cardinal collected ancient manuscripts, assembling one of the largest libraries in Europe, though what you come here for now is his art collection, stamped with his taste for Jan Brueghel, sixteenth-century Venetians and some of the more kitsch followers of Leonardo. Among many mediocre works, there is a rare painting by Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of a Musician , a cartoon by Raphael for the School of Athens, and a Caravaggio considered to be Italy’s first ever still life. The museum’s quirkiest exhibit, however, is a lock of Lucrezia Borgia’s hair – place for safe-keeping in a glass phial ever since Byron (having decided that her hair was the most beautiful he had ever seen) extracted one as a keepsake from the library downstairs where it used to be kept unprotected.
Cutting crossways Via Torino and Via Mazzini to Corso di Porta Romano, one of the city’s busiest symmetric roads, takes you to the church of San Nazaro . It’s something of a minor sight, but the severe octagonal chapel which serves as its vestibule was the family church of one of the city’s better-known traitors – the condottiere Giangiacomo Trivulzio, who led the French attack on Milan to spite his rival Lodovico Sforza and was rewarded by being prefabricated the city’s French governor. His tomb and those of his family are contained in niches around the walls, the inscription above Giangiacomo’s reading, “He who never rested now rests: silence.”
Behind San Nazaro, the Ospedale Maggiore – once known locally as the “Ca’ Granda” (Big House) – was an ambitious project undertaken by the Florentine architect Filarete to unite the city’s numerous hospitals and charitable institutions on one site. His hopes of introducing Renaissance structure to Milan were dampened by local architects who, as soon as Filarete returned to Florence, introduced the late-Gothic elements clearly visible on the facade. To get a clearer intent of Filarete’s intentions, step inside to look at the courtyards – eight small ones formed by two crucifixes, separated by a ninth rectangular one. Today the building houses the city’s university.
South Of San Lorenzo
The section of the old town south of the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo is less visited than the attraction-packed districts to the north, and more residential. Many of Genoa’s students and young professionals live in the upper floors of the old buildings lining Via dei Giustiniani and Via San Bernardo, generating a lively bar-culture in the surrounding alleys. From the cathedral and Piazza Matteotti, narrow Salita Pollaiuoli plunges you into the gloom between high buildings down to a crossroads with Via San Bernardo , a long, straight thoroughfare built by the Romans and now one of Genoa’s most characterful old-town streets, with grocers and bakers trading behind the portals of palaces decorated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. On the south side of the crossroads is tiny Piazza San Donato , a quiet square overlooked by the church of San Donato, whose decorous octagonal Byzantine-style campanile peeks over the roofs of this run-down quarter of town, not unlike the polygonal Matitone office-block rising above the industrial port further west. A crumbly, bare Romanesque church with a Roman architrave surviving over its door, San Donato’s stark simplicity is refreshing after the self-importance of the nearby Gesù on Piazza Matteotti.
South Of The River
Visitors to Florence might perceive the Arno as merely a brief interruption in the urban fabric, but Florentines talk as though a ravine divided their city. North of the river is Arno di quà (“over here”), while the south side is Arno di là (“over there”), also known as the Oltrarno , literally “Beyond the Arno”. Though traditionally an artisans’ quarter, the Oltrarno has always contained prosperous enclaves, and many of the ruling families chose to settle in this area. Nowadays some of the city’s swankiest shops line Borgo San Jacopo, while the windows of Via Maggio are an amazing display of palatial furnishings. The direct route from the city centre to the heart of Oltrarno crosses the river on the Ponte Vecchio , the only bridge not mined by the retreating Nazis in 1944. Built in 1345 to replace an ancient wooden bridge, the bustling thoroughfare has always been loaded with shops propped over the water. Up until the sixteenth century, butchers, fishmongers and tanners occupied the bridge, but in 1565 the Medici had the Corridoio Vasariano constructed over the arcades as a private passageway between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Palazzo Pitti. For a generation, the noble nostrils suffered the stench rising from the bridge, until in 1593 Ferdinando I ejected the butchers and installed goldsmiths instead. Today, still replete with jewellery firms, the bridge is crammed with sightseers and big-spending shoppers during the day, and also remains busy after the shutters come down, when street traders set out their stalls and the local lads hang around the bust of Cellini.
Santa Felìcita , at the southern end of the bridge, is worth a visit (Mon-Sat 9am-noon & 3-6pm, Sun 10-11am & noon-1pm) for the paintings by Pontormo in the Cappella Capponi, just inside the door on the right. His weirdly erotic Deposition is one of the masterworks of Florentine Mannerism, its rough colours slicing through the chapel’s gloom. There’s no sign of any standard imagery, or even the Cross: instead, androgynous figures clad in billows of drapery – metallic blue, puce green and bubblegum pink – bear the lifeless body of Christ like a mournful trophy, backed only by a solitary, ghostly cloud.
